" 259

"I knew thou wouldst come," she said " 268

Some one comes behind my chair " 354

THE RED SYMBOL

CHAPTER I

THE MYSTERIOUS FOREIGNER

"Hello! Yes--I'm Maurice Wynn. Who are you?"

"Harding. I've been ringing you up at intervals for hours. Carson's ill,
and you're to relieve him. Come round for instructions to-night. Lord
Southbourne will give them you himself. Eh? Yes, Whitehall Gardens.
Ten-thirty, then. Right you are."

I replaced the receiver, and started hustling into my dress clothes,
thinking rapidly the while.

For the first time in the course of ten years' experience as a special
correspondent, I was dismayed at the prospect of starting off at a
moment's notice--to St. Petersburg, in this instance.

To-day was Saturday, and if I were to go by the quickest route--the Nord
express--I should have three days' grace, but the delay at this end
would not compensate for the few hours saved on the journey. No,
doubtless Southbourne would expect me to get off to-morrow or Monday
morning at latest. He was--and is--the smartest newspaper man in
England.

Well, I still had four hours before I was due at Whitehall Gardens; and
I must make the most of them. At least I should have a few minutes alone
with Anne Pendennis, on our way to the dinner at the Hotel Cecil,--the
Savage Club "ladies" dinner, where she and my cousin Mary would be
guests of Jim Cayley, Mary's husband.

Anne had promised to let me escort her,--the Cayley's brougham was a
small one, in which three were emphatically a crowd,--and the drive from
Chelsea to the Strand, in a hansom, would provide me with the
opportunity I had been wanting for days past, of putting my fate to the
test, and asking her to be my wife.

I had thought to find that opportunity to-day, at the river picnic Mary
had arranged; but all my attempts to secure even a few minutes alone
with Anne had failed; though whether she evaded me by accident or design
I could not determine, any more than I could tell if she loved me.
Sometimes, when she was kind, my hopes rose high, to fall below zero
next minute.

"Steer clear of her, my boy," Jim Cayley had said to me weeks ago, when
Anne first came to stay with Mary. "She's as capricious as she's
imperious, and a coquette to her finger-tips. A girl with hair and eyes
like that couldn't be anything else."

I resented the words hotly at